


A Child in Time

by ariel2me



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-07-06
Updated: 2013-07-06
Packaged: 2017-12-17 20:07:00
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 668
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/871467
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ariel2me/pseuds/ariel2me
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He was not present for her birth. She was the girl born amidst salt and smoke at Dragonstone, while her father labored unheralded in King’s Landing for his royal brother. Her mother’s scream was muted even in labor; Selyse was a woman who kept her own counsel. A raven was sent to King’s Landing announcing the birth, and a raven was what came back to Dragonstone, not Shireen’s father.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Child in Time

 

He was not present for her birth. She was the girl born amidst salt and smoke at Dragonstone, while her father labored unheralded in King’s Landing for his royal brother. Her mother’s scream was muted even in labor; Selyse was a woman who kept her own counsel. A raven was sent to King’s Landing announcing the birth, and a raven was what came back to Dragonstone, not Shireen’s father.

He came home when she almost died. His first touch was on the dead, flaky skin on her cheek, a legacy of her illness.

“Are you certain it does not hurt her? Absolutely certain? _”_ He had asked the maester over and over again.

“She will not feel anything there, my lord,” the maester had assured and reassured him.

She did not cry when he finally held her in his arms. Her eyes wide open, staring at this stranger who had never held her before, this man who should have held her long before this, she had let out a gurgle that startled her father. He considered her as if he was considering a fully grown woman. He stared at her wide blue eyes, the same color as his own, wondering what her thoughts consisted of.

He left again, back to his duties and his brother, and she saw him only occasionally. She grew and grew, learned to read and write, learned not to lament his absence. His letters were dull and dutiful, devoid of any feeling or sentiment. “ _I have missed you_ ,” he had never written. “ _I love you,”_ he had never said. She was shy and wary with him, a father who was more like a distant uncle. He was inconsistent with her, alternating between extreme brusqueness and excessive courtesy. She had a thousand questions and a million stories to tell him, but her tongue always came up short in her father’s presence.

The unexpected death of the King’s Hand, and the appointment of a new Hand, suddenly precipitated her father’s return to Dragonstone. Absence turned into continuous presence, if only in body and not in spirit and mind. He was home, but not really. He was there with them, but barely. He spoke not a word during meals, spent his time brooding over the injustice his older brother had visited upon him once more. “ _Storm’s End should have been Shireen’s inheritance_ ,” he thought, fixating over the old injustice, never forgotten or forgiven.

Another death changed many things for her. She was now a princess. Princess Shireen. Her father was still home, but more preoccupied than before. Letters and ravens and ships and knights, all clamoring for his attention. He left for battle without saying goodbye. He came home, defeated, without saying anything at all.

Her mother’s uncle incurred her father’s wrath for conspiring to trade her away to the enemy. “She is my only child, my rightful heir,” he had shouted. The child he had barely paid attention to, the reproachful voice in his head – his constant companion these days – was reminding him.

_She is better off without my bitterness and my fury infecting her_ , he tried to convince himself. _And my despair._

“Will you miss Cousin Edric if he is gone?” He had not dared ask her.

“I miss Cousin Edric,” she had told him anyway, after the bastard boy was safely smuggled away by his onion knight. “Will he be coming back?” She had asked. He had no answer to that.

“Will you miss me if I am gone?” He had no intention of asking her that.

“I will miss you every day, Father. I will pray for your safe return,” she had told him anyway, when he left her and her mother at Eastwatch-by-the-Sea, on his way to battle the wildlings. “Will you promise me that you will come back?” She had asked. He had no answer to that either, except to touch her scarred cheek once more, a repeat of his first touch, and fervently wished that it would not be his last.

 


End file.
